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How To Get The Best Travel Guide To The World’s Top Cities

Traveling is a very fulfilling activity which not everybody gets the chance to enjoy. You need to have enough time, budget and a sense of adventure in order to travel. However, traveling can be stressful when you are not prepared. Especially when traveling abroad, even the tiniest of things can get to you and cause stress, delays, additional expense and frustration. These are things that could be a bummer when traveling.

However, you can avoid such when you have a travel guide with you. A travel tour guide will help make your trip a lot more manageable. You can focus more on enjoying your travel and time off from your daily routine. If you are used to traveling without the help of a guide and want to give it a try for your next trip, here are tips in finding the best travel guide to help you tour the world’s top cities with ease.

What Travel Tour Guide Qualities You Must Look For?

Before looking for a travel tour guide, you first have to know the best qualities that will make him of great service to you. What are these winning qualities?

• Expertise – Choose a tour guide who has enough knowledge about the trade. He must be in the business for quite a long time to be able to establish his connections and to know the ins and outs of the industry. Though they can be a little expensive to hire, they can give you specialized service from hassle free, last minute plane booking to getting you VIP tickets to the most exclusive tourist destinations in the world.

• They must be travelers too – If you want to know what places to visit in a particular city, ask your travel guide. Your guide must be a traveler too. This way, he can suggest what places to visit and what to avoid; where to dine, shop and party.

• Has good connections – A seasoned tour guide will know who to contact upon arrival in the airport. He must have contacts of drivers in each city you want to visit, hotel managers as well as restaurant owners. With this kind of tour guide, you know you are in good hands.

• Communicative – You can’t benefit from your guide’s expertise when you don’t understand each other. So before hiring one, make sure that you share a common language you can use to communicate.

Searching For A Guide

Now that you have an idea what to look for, it’s time to know where to look and how to do it. There are several ways on how to search the best tour guide for your needs. Keep reading.

Tip #1 Ask For Referrals.

Asking for referrals is probably the easiest way to find a good tour guide for your next trip. Aside from getting an evaluation about the guide’s performance from your friend for instance, referrals can cut the whole search process short which saves you time and effort. Before asking for referral, think about whether you trust the referring person or not. Know also if the referrer and the guide are related or friends to avoid biases. You only want to get what you pay for and that is quality service.

Tip #2 Do A Little Research.

If you can’t get any referrals from your friends and colleagues, it is time to look somewhere else. Make an online research. The Internet is a great place to look for a thing you want to buy or a service you want to avail. When you make an online search for a travel guide, you will most likely be directed to websites of travel tour companies and travel guide magazine and publications that employ competitive tour guides.
You can also go to travel guide directories. There are individual travel guides as well as travel guide companies that list their services in these directories. These directories are also geographically categorized which means that you can easily find guides that are within your area. Even craigslist can offer you great results when you search for tour guides. Many individuals look for travel tour guide jobs through this online marketplace and directory. What’s best with these online sites is the availability of reviews that will guide you in your search as well as in making a choice.

Tip #3 Contact Travel Agencies Near You.

Travel guides are mostly employed with tour guiding agencies. These agencies will most likely have someone available to aid you in your travel arrangements. If you cannot find the right person for the job using the afore-mentioned ways, it is time to drop by the tour guiding agency nearest you. By doing so, you will be able to meet the guide in person, be able to talk to him and determine whether he is the right person for the job or not. Of course, you can always ask the guide questions to determine whether he will fit your requirements of not.

Tip #4 Travel Magazines Also Have A List Of Tour Guides You Can Contact.

Aside from searching online and asking from the tour guiding agency nearest you, you can also make use of travel tour guide magazines. These publications also have contacts of the best people in the trade.

Tip #5 Find A Local Guide.

Sometimes, the best people to guide you in a foreign city are the locals. You can also opt to enlist their services if you can’t find a good candidate for the job. While they may not be able to take care of your flight arrangements, they will surely make up for it with their knowledge of their own city.